#AskPS
How to tackle a client drop?
Diptesh Das .

I need a serious suggestion from all the entrepreneurs here.

1) How do you tackle a client drop? I get seriously and emotionally broken everytime I lose a client🙂

2) With current market situation, I usually don't hire as monthly salary basis and so in per word basis I had to hire guy who might not be as expert as higher quality service providers since if I could have ensured a quality inflow of leads I would have hired on salary base. Do you think I should take a risk?

3) How to do distribute works among team? I mean one client for one service provider or what? What factors do u consider while handing over a specific client to any guy of your team?

4) Should I carry on marketing no matter whatever happens within my team?

I would be grateful to get answers to these queries.

Originally Posted Here
18 Comments

Roshan Blr 

get used to it..its a numbers game .

Diptesh Das

just today I lost a client and I got devastated even though I have others and good number of lead inflow🙂

Roshan Blr

 focus on the next one..understand why you lost this client. was it budget issue or anything else. ask the client for feedback ..improve your next pitch

Avinash Kewlani

second that, you need to keep the cycle going on, there would be a churn, but you need to keep that in control because onboarding costs are way higher than retention costs.

Diptesh Das

Avinash Kewlani but I don't do paid marketing then how is there an onboarding cost? Care to explain?

Avinash Kewlani 

Diptesh Das Sure, now you don’t have any cost because there’s no paid marketing, however, once you scale up, you’ll try to improvise your client experience, which includes investing in onboarding as well
How you make the client experience delightful that depends on person to person and org to org. Hence I mentioned that there would be onboarding expenses which would be higher than retaining.
Best example:- Uber, initially when they came in 2013, they used to give a free ride up to ₹300/- and additional ₹300/- for every referral, these are the expenses which will be part of onboarding.

Diptesh Das

Avinash Kewlani that's an awesome one. One more question, the example you gave of UBER is different from Content Service provision. Can u give an example with respect to my service?🙂

Avinash Kewlani 

Diptesh Das I wish I could.. 😊

Madhuri Sen

1) Ask the client and/or anyone else why you lost them. Make notes. Think about what you can learn from the feedback and what (if) needs to/can be changed. Not every client loss is due to reasons under your control. Some are. Taking stock and having aplan of action also makes you less emotional and more pragmatic.

2) If client retention or even project completion are at stake due to poor quality, you might want to hire someone of better quality on a retainer contract with one week termination clause. Probably part of the remuneration fixed and rest based on actual workload. I'm not sure it's salary that determines quality. Any sort of stable and secure contract terms should be equally effective to serve the purpose.

3) Client point of contact should be single person who should be responsible for getting the accurate brief, setting expectations and matching delivery quality, deadlines etc to commitment needs to be one person. The actual execution can be based on what needs to get done and resource available.

4) If you don't have a team to deliver what you market, not sure what your plan is if business/enquiries do come in. If you have a pared down team, there is no reason to stop organic or low cost marketing regardless of market situation. So long as you believe there is demand to be found, even if it's under the rocks.

Diptesh Das

that answers all my queries at once. Thanks for taking time to write this🙂🙂

Mohul Ghosh

Worked for 10+ years in various DM agencies, handled clients from 10+ nations. Just three suggestions: a) Attrition rate is always high in agencies, no matter how good is ur work. 50% of the time, their leaving you has no fault of ur team. So, the solution? Maintain a team or few hours daily whose only objective is to get new clients. typically, large agencies have entire teams of BDs and sales experts, constantly pitching for new clients. 1 goes, 2 comes in. Thats the way it works. b) Every agency has its own DNA to manage and handle projects. Hit and trial. Find your own mojo, figure out how things will work out, and what makes you productive: That is highest ROI at minimum investment. c) Never get emotional. Its business, and treat it like on. Once u get emotional, things get scary.

Diptesh Das

actually I have one VA, one Linkedin manager and other writers that makes up a 10 membered active team. But something is going wrong in terms of getting quality writer at a good price🙂May be I have to focus more on team building now

Abhishek Nale

Why do you get attached emotionally? It's business. Give and take of values.
No matter what you do it's gonna happen all time.

Diptesh Das

 that's where I fail. I am trying to cope up this emotional aspect😔

Abhishek Nale

Play sports. Do aggressive exercises. Conquer it.

Diptesh Das

 even I used to play football but luck bari kutti cheez hai...last year or the year before my ligament (ACL) got torn completely. And I am still on rehab😔 after surgery

Shitij Malhotra

1) How do you tackle a client drop?
Keep a simple tracker - why did I lose the client -
**** speed/service issues,
**** price/budget/money issues
**** quality of work,
**** client priorities have changed (the work is now going to nobody)

Also, keep internal growth plans - i want to be 1 Crore by march end, and then divide this by average deal size - say Rs. 30,000, so need 300 projects.
Now if you drop 1 client, but add 3, it will not upset you, but if you drop 1 and dont add 1, then you can focus on sales


2) Hire vs outsource

In the agency business, it is OK to have freelancers, just have enough that if one drops out the other can take over.
Don't hire till you have sufficient work consistently

3) How to do distribute works among team?

Spreading the team helps in 3 ways, client and freelancer cant directly connect, and if one guy drops out others can fill in, then can help each other and manage the team more independantly, they will part of a bigger team.
disadvantages - you have to explain to 2 or more people, you wont get same quality of output, you need to manage their internal fights and division of repsonsibilites

4) Should I carry on marketing no matter whatever happens within my team?
the CEOs job is only 1 - get business / funding / revenue / money
and you have to market right now, there is plenty of work with new guys launching new businesses during their free time.

I need a content writer, DM me and lets discuss

Diptesh Das

well I was not expecting the end🙃🙃and thanks for the value packed answer🙂🙂

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